Conference on Leibnitz

Our blogger has recently been made aware of the publication of a new translation of Leibnitz’s famous treatise on the teaching of law. Details about the conference here.

A short blurb by the author of the translation below:

About the Leibniz’s The New Method of Learning and Teaching Jurisprudence

“This book, small in relation to its size, but considerable if we look at the aim which Mr. Leibniz pursues, became an extraordinary rarity. I would have done certainly useless movements to find it in bookshops, or at friends, if the case would not have dropped it in my hands in an unforeseen way” .[ M. L. de Neufville (1734), Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de Mr. Leibnitz. Amsterdam chez François Changuion, 25,my transl.].
Indeed, after the first issue in Frankfurt 1667, published only with the initials of the Author , the Nova Methodus will be reprinted only in 1748 with a short preface by Christian Wolf (or Wolff, 1679–1754) . This edition will be reused twenty years later by Luis Dutens in the first critical publication of Leibniz’s works.
At the end of the XVII century, Leibniz added in late revision the so called note “D” , now printed in footnote to the critical edition of Nova Methodus by Paul Ritter [1872–1954], Willy Kabitz [1876–1942], Heinrich Schepers (eds.) of the German Academy of Science.
As for translations of Nova Methodus in modern languages , to my knowledge the only one complete is mine in Italian and here in English. I tried to give the most comprehensive framework of the juridical thought of Leibniz not only in philosophical sense, but also in juridical technical sense, which is the most important in this booklet, because the same is specifically devoted to the Right.
The other translations in modern languages contain only selected passages, pursuing different aims, so that a judgment about cannot be expressed, except that in some cases they inaccurately translate juridical terms, for they are made by philosophers not by jurists, and this is an unacceptable limit for a juridical book.